


Point of Origin

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Fever, Gen, Magical Realism, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the story changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point of Origin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt on Watson's Woes:
> 
> DATE: July 18  
> PROMPT: [Picture](http://pics.livejournal.com/kcscribbler/pic/000fqhk2/)
> 
> pics.livejournal.com/kcscribbler/pic/000fqhk2/

 

 “No sign of the fever abating?”

“None. He’s still clinging to life, but if the fever doesn’t break soon…”

“A pity. Although in some ways, it might be a kindness if it does take him.”

“How so?”

“Just look at him. He’ll never be fit for service again, even if he does survive. Not with that leg wound. And he was a surgeon, you know, as well as a doctor.”

“Oh dear. Not much chance he’ll ever hold a scalpel again, not with the damage to the shoulder.”

“No, very unlikely. Such a waste.”

“Tragic. Yet another casualty of Maiwand, I fear.”

The orderly listened to them go, already chatting about other things, but never raised his eyes from his patient’s face. He was as invisible to them as a piece of furniture, he knew. _Idiots_ , he thought to himself as he mopped a damp rag gently across the fevered man’s brow. It wasn’t really fair of him, but he couldn’t help but feel the scorn. He knew he saw things that others didn’t. He was the seventh son of a seventh son, after all, and the Scots hadn’t forgotten what that meant, even if their bloody English cousins had. But Sight or not, he found it almost impossible to believe that they couldn’t _see_. That any man could look into this patient’s face and somehow miss what was happening…it was ridiculous.

Yes, the fever was burning this man, hollowing him out, consuming every trace of what would have been his destiny. Perhaps he would have been a career soldier, perhaps he’d have risen in the ranks. Maybe he’d have found himself a jolly daughter of the regiment to marry, maybe he would have bled out in some far-distant battle. All that, all those possibilities were gone now. He’d seen a fire once in a fancy building, stone outsides glowing in the heat but standing tall even as the insides dissolved into ash. Those walls stood for years, providing shelter for flowers and trees the way they’d once cradled furniture and people. That was exactly what was happening to this man. When it was over, he’d still have the same façade, still be the same man to look at (more or less, if you didn’t have _eyes_ ) on the outside, but on the inside… His mother would say it was God’s fire, clearing the path. But this man was not being burned to die, oh no. Death was not his destiny, not yet. The orderly could see the long, thin shadow out of the corners of his eyes, sometimes lying across this man’s face, sometimes next to him on the thin pillow, sometimes hovering in the corner, but always there, never far. A shadow thrown by nothing physically present in the room, but there all the same.

There was something waiting for this man. Some _one_ , somewhere, whose life was altering even as this man’s altered, whose life would be utterly changed when they finally met. Their lives would be completely different, for this man and the other – it would be no simple encounter, one brief but life-shifting moment, but whole lives intertwined. And when they met, when that some _when_ happened, the whole world would change.

The patient moaned, fever-hazed eyes slitting open, sweat blooming yet again along cheeks and forehead and in the sun-bleached moustache. A few garbled words fell from his lips, unrecognizable syllables uttered in a ragged voice tinged with a familiar accent. The orderly grinned, hearing those echoes of home in the man’s speech, and swiped the damp cloth over the man’s forehead.

“Easy, laddie,” he murmured. “Have nae fear. Ye may not know it, but ye’re safe, and ye’re right where ye need to be. Ye’re on the path.”


End file.
